The All Progressives Congress (APC) has said it will not grant an automatic ticket to any of the leading presidential aspirants on the party’s platform, Thisday reports.
The party made this known after pressure from certain elements to make concessions that will favour former Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari the party’s candidate for the 2015 presidential elections.
The national publicity secretary of APC, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, speaking to Thisday on a phone call said granting an automatic ticket would never be possible in APC.
He said: “No such thing will happen. There is nothing like automatic ticket for anyone. The party will do no such thing. Nobody will be granted an automatic ticket, that I can assure you.
“Most of these people who habour such thoughts do not have access to the party leaders, including Tinubu and Buhari. We intend to showcase our internal democracy. As a matter of fact, we intend to showcase a model of internal democracy for other parties to emulate.”
The party’s secretary added that the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) will hold a meeting on Wednesday, September 17, 2014 where they hope to work out the modalities for APC primaries ahead of the 2015 elections.
A group of Buhari’s supporters are still mounting pressure on the leadership of the party to pick the former Head of State as the party’s flag bearer with a view to eventually railroading others to support him and back down.
This development, it was learnt, has not gone down well with top presidential contenders such as former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, Kano State Governor Ibrahim Kwankwaso, and Senator Bukola Saraki’s group within the party.
A senior party member addressed journalists over the weekend on the alleged manoeuvres by certain forces within the APC who are canvassing for Buhari to get an automatic ticket.
The move is seen as being in line with the merger agreement allegedly reached between the former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).
According to the party member, the plan was to anoint the party’s standard-bearer without going through an election. However, this is not going down well with Kwankwaso, Saraki and Atiku support groups within the opposition party, he disclosed.
Leading APC figures indicated that any attempt to foist the Buhari candidature on the party without following democratic process is likely to tear the party apart.
According to an informed APC member, who did not want to be named, the position of other presidential contenders is that any attempt to blindside other members of the party in the election of a presidential candidate would destroy the foundation and credibility of the APC.
The source said they are particularly worried by feelers from the Buhari camp, which is insisting that the emergence of the retired General as the presidential candidate “is a settled matter”.
He said the attempt at a Buhari imposition was itself kick-started by the former military ruler when, in an interview with Rariya, a Hausa newspaper that was culled by Premium Times, where he disagreed with the modified open direct primaries which had been adopted by the APC.
The party source said Buhari’s position was given fillip by the spokesman of The Buhari Organisation (TBO), Osita Okechuku, who said: “Given all the indices, APC already has a de facto presidential candidate in the person of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.).
“If you go through the constitution of APC, under Article 20, it says for nomination of candidate either for party offices or the presidential election, you first explore consensus. If an agreement is reached through consensus, it has to be affirmed.
“If we go through that method, though we have a lot of good quality people in APC, I do not know of any person who the leadership of APC would tell Buhari to step down for.”
In the same vein, he alleged that the former FCT Minister, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, had used his twitter handle to canvass a similar idea on the social media.
The source explained that the position by Buhari’s loyalists smacks of arrogance and disrespect for other democratic voices in the party, adding that any such attempt to “disregard the democratic process in the choice of a presidential flag bearer could drag APC into deep and possibly irreparable damage”.
The APC source warned that party members should not be reduced to “slaves and sheepishly expected to sign on the dotted lines when confronted with the nauseating idea of an automatic ticket.”
He vowed that the “automatic adoption” of Buhari or any other aspirant for that matter is undemocratic and would be resisted, adding that the scheming for an automatic ticket for Buhari “may be probably coming from PDP fifth columnists who want to drive a nail into the APC coffin”.
According to the source, the APC is bigger than any individual member and its credibility and commitment to democratic values must not be sacrificed on the altar of satisfying anybody’s stubborn ambition.
The concerned APC chieftain who is backing one of the leading contenders for the party’s presidential ticket, maintained that at no time was any decision taken by the party leadership to give anybody an automatic presidential ticket for the 2015 presidential ticket.
He noted that the success of the modified open direct primaries for choosing its governorship candidate in Adamawa for the October 11 governorship election has given confidence to the party leadership that it is a preferred option for choosing its candidates for the 2015 elections.
Initially when APC embarked on a tour to woo the five Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors and Atiku who were later to defect to the party, each was given the assurance that APC as a platform would be devoid of impositions and the conduct of processes would be free and fair.
“In fact the registration of the party members was the take-off point for a new beginning, conferring equal membership on all party members. So where is this idea of the ‘divine right to rule’ by Buhari coming from?” the source queried.
He advised the party leadership to come out openly to issue clarifications about the process to be adopted to produce the APC presidential candidate for the 2015 elections.
